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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

the balloon is good. The heavy ball is good as well. The normal one is technically almost there, what needs a fix is his forward translation. As the bounces get smaller, his forward momentum has to decrease. Take you dry erase marker and plot out every where where the ball hits the floor and every frame at highest point of the bounce. You'll see that the bounces decrease in height, but almost stay the same going screen left. Start cutting a third or even half of that translation forward and you'll be set. The ball will probably not reach the wall, or maybe just roll to it.

Walkcycle. Looks good! There is a big problem though, which was addressed in class. Remember not to translate the body of your character forward, stick to the up and down.Your feet also seem to accelerate backwards once they hit the floor, but 2/3rds into it slow down again. Make sure that your z curve (or x) is completely linear with only two keys, from the moment the foot touches the floor until it lifts off. That pop you mentioned probably comes from that uneven timing.Before you go into the leg pop details, take your main body controller and (in the front view) move your character left and right, so that around x12 the weight of the body is more over the screen right leg, and the same on the other side, around x27 or so. Don't have him sway left and right like crazy, just a little bit, just for some weight shifts, because right now the body looks fairly locked.The walk is fairly real, not exaggerated I mean, so because of that I would lessen the nose up and down.Your hands rotate back too much during the swing back, so x0 and x16. If they would be that swingy, they would be in that position two to three frames later (overlap and drag), but in a realistic walk, you can cut that rotation at least in half. Same goes for the rotation looking at it in the front view. Most of the time the palm is facing us, but when the arms are swinging forward, again x0 and x16, the hands rotate with the back of the hand facing us. It's a bit much and you can cut that rotation in half as well. Being that big it looks like a deliberate move of the character, not a movement that's part of the walk mechanics.Take all your finger, hand, elbow, arm and shoulder keys and delay them for two frames. Right now you arms are swinging like the legs. Leg takes a step, arm is in front, leg goes back, arm goes back. But the arms are a tiny bit delayed compared to the leg.Delay also the hip movement. Frontview: at x20 (and x4 for the other one), as the screen left leg is planting down, your hips can be completely leveled, then have the key linear at that point and keep the timing of when the hips are going up, with that key on spline. With that delay and broken tangent you will get a nicer up movement of the hips, showing a bit more weight.Last but not least, a little expression in the face would help, getting rid of that default look.